Our precious Ralph is running out of time: Parents’ desperate bid to raise £1million before Christmas to fly three-year-old with rare cancer to the US for a vital triple transplant

If there is one child in Britain who needs a Christmas miracle, it’s three-year-old Ralph Tatham. 

Diagnosed with an ultra-rare but potentially curable form of liver cancer, his parents Katie and Graham have just days to raise £1 million to fly him to America for a triple transplant operation. 

Surgeons at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital are backing the couple’s desperate bid to save their son, saying that Ralph – who has been top of this country’s liver, bowel and pancreas transplant list since May – could die if he waits any longer for the organs to become available in the UK.

Today the chemotherapy holding his cancer at bay is failing with every round and his tumour markers are rising fast. 

Katie and Graham, both 35, now have no option but to beg for public help to fund treatment in the US where there’s a much bigger pool of organ donors.

Ralph Tatham, 3 pictured with mum Katie, 35. They live at Chingford in East London

Ralph could die if he waits any longer for the organs to become available in the UK

Surgeons at London ‘s Great Ormond Street Hospital are backing the couple’s desperate bid to save their son

If they succeed, Ralph stands every chance of being well enough to return to their home in North London in the New Year. 

If they succeed, Ralph stands every chance of being well enough to return to their home in North London in the New Year. 

‘With this operation, by next Christmas he could be starring in his school Nativity play,’ said Katie. ‘We have been waiting since May but no organs have come up and we do not have much time left.

‘Ralph can’t afford to wait another six months. If we’re going to go to America, we have to go now while there’s still time. If the cancer spreads then it’ll be too late.

‘Going public is not a decision we have taken lightly but it looks like the only way to save Ralph’s life. Our doctors have said to us, ‘if you can go to America, then you should’ because there’s a much higher chance of receiving donated organs there. We’re talking days rather than months or years.

‘At the outset we were optimistic the operation could be done here in the UK. It would be performed by the NHS and Ralph is a priority case. He has been since May.

It’s just the pool of donors is so small here. The wait has been excruciating, and as the days have turned into weeks and the weeks into months, our hope fades.

‘I will do anything to save my son – what mother wouldn’t? I cannot let him die. If that means asking people, charities, companies, to help me save Ralph, then I’ll do it. We have to fundraise now. If we start in a couple of months it’ll be too late.

‘So we need £1 million before Christmas, certainly in January. It’s the price of my son’s life.’

Diagnosed with an ultra-rare but potentially curable form of liver cancer , his parents Katie and Graham have just days to raise £1 million to fly him to America for a triple transplant operation

Heartbreakingly, it was last Christmas when Ralph fell ill

Heartbreakingly, it was last Christmas when Ralph fell ill. Katie, an accountant, and Graham, who works in life sciences, thought their under-the-weather toddler had picked up a winter bug at nursery. 

But by January he had still not shaken it off and was complaining about a sore and swollen tummy.

After repeated trips to the GP and a failed course of antibiotics, he was referred to their local hospital for a scan. It was only meant to be a precautionary measure, but medics discovered tumours on his liver.

Further tests diagnosed heptoblastoma, a rare cancer which affects just two out of every million children in the UK annually.

‘I don’t think any of us believed anything was wrong. Who thinks a sore tummy in a three-year-old is cancer?’ asks Katie. ‘I get post-traumatic stress disorder thinking back to that moment when he was diagnosed – nobody suspected anything sinister at all.

‘Ralph is just a little boy who loves spaghetti bolognese, his Hot Wheels cars and going to the beach in Cornwall to watch his Daddy try to surf. 

I had a great pregnancy with him, he had three years of good health and then this. It’s cruel beyond belief.

‘Now he thinks that having a Hickman line [a tube in the chest joined to a major blood vessel] is normal. He thinks that having your bloods taken twice a week is normal. And he thinks spending so much time in hospital is normal.

‘When he’s well enough, he comes home and it’s a joy, because that is actually normal. And that’s all we want. Ralph is a funny, sunny, kind little boy with blond hair and a gorgeous giggle.

‘I often think back to when he was born, holding him in my arms and thinking I’ll never love anything as much as this. How could I have known he was going to go through this horrible diagnosis, this treatment – and the worst is yet to come.’

Initially it was hoped that Graham could donate part of his liver to his son, as he was a match. Before that however, another liver became available from someone who’d died.

‘With this operation, by next Christmas he could be starring in his school Nativity play,’ said Katie

Ralph was taken into the operating theatre, but when surgeons opened him up they discovered the cancer had spread into the veins which supply his liver. It was a localised spread, but it meant he could not survive with a liver transplant alone.

‘That was our second devastating blow,’ said Katie. ‘The thought of him having to undergo a liver transplant was horrendous, but we knew it had to happen. 

Then to be told Graham couldn’t donate, and that Ralph had to have a multi-organ transplant, it was almost unbearable. We knew the odds of being given all three organs were much slimmer.

‘His chemotherapy continued, but each round isn’t holding his cancer back for as long as it used to. He hasn’t got many more rounds left.

‘There are other sorts of chemotherapy Ralph’s medical team can try but there’s no guarantee another one will work, and he is reaching his maximum levels of toxicity. Small children are resilient, but it’s getting harder every time.’

Despite their anguish, the couple have spearheaded an NHS drive to increase rates of organ donation, using Ralph’s story on television, in cinemas and on social media to highlight the plight of the 230 children in the UK currently waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant.

The nationwide campaign is called Waiting To Live, but it has not been enough to save their own son – yet.

Katie and Graham met as undergraduates at Cambridge University when they were just 19 and always hoped to become parents. 

‘I wanted to be a mum more than anything, so having Ralph was something I never took for granted,’ said Katie. ‘He was so precious – when he was born we felt like a lovely little family.’

By the time of his diagnosis, Katie was already pregnant with Ralph’s brother Albie, putting her under a huge amount of physical and mental stress when she was at her most vulnerable. 

She remembers spending nights in bed comforting Ralph, or sitting with him in intensive care, while cradling her growing bump. ‘Albie is five months old now and he’s as much a blessing as Ralph, albeit one which came at the wrong time.

‘Because of Ralph’s illness he has not had the childhood he deserves, the attention he needs. We try our hardest but the past few months have not been the best.’

Surgery could change that in a matter of hours. The triple organ transplant sounds dangerous and complex but is considered a routine operation in America. 

It is performed at a number of hospitals in the States, including medical centres in California, Boston, Miami and Nebraska.

Katie and Graham hope they will – somehow – be able to raise £1 million in the coming days and take their boy for treatment. 

When they get home with him they plan to continue their efforts to promote organ donation, in which the UK lags behind many other countries.

‘It’s not a subject people really want to talk about, especially not when it concerns children,’ said Katie. ‘We need to change that, not just for Ralph but for all families because you never know when this could happen to you.’

Ralph Tatham, 3 with brother Albie, age 5 months.

He needs a multi organ transplant to save him from an incredibly rare liver cancer called heptoblastoma – that has spread around his body. It only affects 2 in a million children

She is clear the £1 million target is simply to cover Ralph’s medical bills, and it won’t pay for them in full, nor cover their transport and living costs in America. The family are privately funding all they can.

‘We have to try to go. I don’t want to jinx things, but the outcomes for this operation are very good. I have spoken to other mums whose children have had this surgery and they are doing well. They’re back at school and the biggest thing they have to worry about is their homework. That’s how it should be for Ralph, who has a very real prospect of a complete cure.

‘His cancer could start to spread any day, and then it will be too late. We have an amazing team of doctors here in the UK who have supported us this far but we are running out of time. 

Ralph has been so brave, waiting for his transplant through 11 rounds of chemotherapy. He’s been sick and exhausted but he has bounced back.

‘He needs and deserves this – it’s his last chance. We will do everything in our power to make it happen. So my plea, as a mum, as Ralph’s mum, is this: help us to save him before Christmas.’

A spokesman for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children said: ‘Ralph is a brave little boy whose parents want to do everything they can to give him the best chance to get the multi-organ transplant he desperately needs. 

Despite the incredibly generous gift by many donors there are still not enough organs to meet the needs of patients waiting for transplants.

‘Our team will continue to work with NHS partners to support Ralph and his family as they explore all possible options.’

To donate to Ralph’s cause visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/ralphs-campaignlifesaving-transplant-for-cancer?utm_campaign=p_nacp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer 

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